Daryl got the coffee. Cheryl drove. Both of them knocked on their grandmother’s door.
“Oh hello!” she said, embracing them both in hugs like a day-old chick’s: firm bones easily felt through soft fuzz, as pleasantly and earnestly surprised as ever. Oh how wonderful it was, to find out she had grandchildren! Oh how nice to see them visiting her! Oh how nice that they brought her coffee! Oh how nice to go with them! All well-planned and well-anticipated yet still such an unexpected treat.
Daryl told her about the new snowblower he’d got a deal on – “nobody upsells you in May,” he explained – and Cheryl told her about how she thought she’d found a buyer for her old truck and she told them about how the squirrels were growing scarcer in her backyard but the groundhogs might have moved back in underneath the shed, and so they were at the house in not much less than four or five conversations.
Daryl opened the door for her. Cheryl put the chair on the porch. He pulled out a thermos. She offered a blanket. “Let us know if you get cold,” they said, and she laughed at them in that rude way that conveys warmth in a manner politeness is powerless to.
Then they went indoors, them and two cans in each of four hands, plus rollers.
Up and down. Up and down. Sidling side to side, slowly, imperceptibly, until a room was done and the next began.
Soft white for the bathroom.
Pale blue in the bedroom.
And on, and on, patching away all the old flaws and tears and scrapes and scratches of time and tragedy until the walls were clear and clean again and even the ceilings were beautiful.
The floor, alas, suffered. Oh well, oh well.
“All done?” she asked them when they came outside, tired and smeared and squinting into the shadows.
“’Till next time,” they told her, and they took her and the chair and the blanket and the (empty) thermos and delivered them all home before the sun finished fading.
***
The next time it rained.
Cheryl drove. Daryl got the coffee.
“Oh hello!”
Cheryl held out the umbrella. Daryl offered the raincoat.
“Oh how sweet!” said their grandmother, and she hugged them a second time each, and accepted both. There was a bit of trouble fitting the umbrella in the car, but oh well, oh well, and the heater was on, so oh well, oh well. She told them the groundhogs were gone, but she thought she’d smelled a skunk around the place recently, and oh they weren’t so bad, you know. Cheryl said her boss was a dick. Daryl said his coworker was a dick. She laughed and told them to keep their chins up.
The blanket was thicker. So were the contents of the thermos. She smiled at the rain as it streamed down in front of her and kicked her feet as they dangled and as Daryl and Cheryl started to haul the tools and the boards and the tiles, armful by armful by armful by aching armful, in and out and in and out until the corpse of the old flooring nearly overflowed Cheryl’s truck and they were hollow-eyed and dead of voice but oh, how the floor shone! Paintless, speckless, pristine, and as level as the lone sands.
“Good work today!” she told them as they dropped her off, umbrella left closed under the near-dry evening sky.
“G’welcome,” mumbled Cheryl.
“N’prbbm,” accepted Daryl.
They forgot about the umbrella.
***
The time after that, it was a beautiful sunny day. This was only spoiled a little by switching out the entire toilet (twice – it almost went wrong the first time) and lugging the new vanity in, all of which involved a full flight of stairs.
“You’ve got this!” their grandmother cheered every time they groaned past her, a flyswatter in one hand and a cold glass in the other. And she was right, and they managed to do the sink too, and for the crowning glory Cheryl got the first light fixture changed just so they wouldn’t have to set foot in the bathroom again for the foreseeable future.
“I’m so proud of you,” she told them, when they dropped her off. So they hugged her again.
***
The light fixtures took the rest of the next trip (the part that wasn’t about her grandmother discussing the absence of skunks while theorizing the possibility of raccoons). Cheryl held the ladder; Daryl screwed in the bulb, their grandmother made the jokes. This division of labour passed the chore quickly, and they weren’t insane enough to START the kitchen, but it certainly helped them plan it, make the last-minute double-checks, the just-being-sure planning, the are-we-sures turning into yes-we-are that let them sleep deeply, peacefully, and plentifully.
***
“No raccoons in days and days,” she sighed as they waited at the red light (it was always red). “But I spotted a lovely little rabbit in the hedge across the way the other day. Froze stiff and ran when I got up to see better!”
“Do you want us to get you one?” asked Cheryl.
“Oh no, no, no, don’t worry. I like them best when they’re wild.”
The kitchen was not wild. The kitchen was under complete control. The cabinets descended into place with lockstep brutality, like giant horrible legos; the countertops clunked into place like coffin lids; the cupboard doors and handles clasped in silent acceptance and slid shut without resistance.
“You’re so wonderful, you know?” she told them as she turned in her front door, hunched over her keys. “Going to all this trouble.”
“It’s not a problem,” said Daryl.
“Nah, you’re good,” said Cheryl.
So she hugged them again, and they hugged her back, oh well, oh well.
***
It was calm and cool and blue at the last. They brought drywell and more titles and the last of the paint and a coffee and a little thermos of something stronger.
“Oh, is it the big day?” she asked them, like she didn’t know.
“Yep,” said Cheryl, handing her the thermos and a kiss on the cheek.
“Sure is,” said Daryl, passing her the coffee and a quick squeeze of the hand.
“How wonderful!” she said. And she meant it completely, oh well, oh well.
They left her on the porch. The breeze was sweet and cold, the air was mild and warm, her blanket was thin and her smile was wide, wider while she watched the birds sing. They took everything and descended low, dropped deep, down one storey and into the craggy walls and cement creak of the basement.
The pump was already good. Cheryl had made sure of that. The electrical was perfectly fine. Daryl had checked.
All they had to do was cover it up.
So they did.
They put up the drywall.
They rolled on the paint.
They laid down the tile.
They trimmed. They tweaked.
And they went upstairs, tired and smiling, and they told her “it’s time.”
“Oh my!” she said with a smile in her words on her face in her crooked back as she stood up with a crunch. “Already?” And it was like she’d never known all along, so they laughed at her and she laughed at them laughing at her, all the way down the stairs, all the way into the clean light on the sparkling floor and the shining walls, all the way to the bare-concrete crevice next to the building’s fuse box, lightless, tileless, cragged, unpainted.
“Oh, isn’t this just divine,” she told them, wriggling her shoulders against the rough surface of the cubby. Her toes curled and gripped against grit and grain. “Yes, I think this will be lovely. You’re both so sweet, you know that?”
“Yes grandma,” said Cheryl.
“So you say,” said Daryl.
She poked him in the cheek. “Oh stop it and take some credit! I love you both, you know?”
“He knows,” Cheryl said, poking his other cheek.
“I know,” Daryl sighed, cheeks forcibly puckered.
“Good! Now finish up; you’ve had a long day already and need your sleep.”
So Daryl and Cheryl gave her another two hugs and they took the last piece of drywall and a bit of soundproofing to mask the echo and they sealed up her smile behind the cubby, oh well, oh well, and while Cheryl started to drag the last of the tools away Daryl walked up to the porch to make a phone call.
“Yep,” he said. “Yep yep. Finished today; the paint’s only just dried. All cleared and ready for tenants. The sooner the better, definitely. We want bodies in this building.”
He pursed his lips at the few birds that yet sang from across the street, shrill and anxious and few.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “No question about that at all. Pets are VERY welcome.”
***
On the way home, Cheryl sat up straight and almost stamped on the brakes halfway through a green light. “Fuck!” she said.
“What? What’s wrong?” asked Daryl.
“She still had my thermos!”